February 21 | Friday | Black Forest
ABIGAIL
The smell of wet fur hung in the air. Hardly surprising, since the wooden cabin they were in was one of the local werewolves’ many hangouts.
She let her gaze travel along the claw-marked walls, then focused on Blake. His nervousness was palpable; she knew how much this situation had affected him.
They heard footsteps, and a moment later, Liam and Norma entered the room. Liam was carrying the limp body of Christine Ellis on his shoulder. He dumped it on the floor unceremoniously
“Careful,” Blake chided him.
“For fuck’s sake, it’s a demon,” Norma reminded him, irritated.
“The demon is inside. You won’t hurt it by tossing the girl on the ground.”
Norma rolled her eyes. The seemingly dismissive gesture was merely a cover for her true emotions. She was frustrated and sad.
“Let’s get to the point, shall we?” she muttered, then sent a small jet of fire toward Christine.
It dissipated just before Christine’s face, but the demon immediately regained consciousness.
“Don’t you dare come near me, you filthy whore!” it hissed at Norma, scrambling back against the wall. “You don’t know what I’m capable of! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you! I’ll wipe you from the face of the earth! Don’t mess with forces you know nothing about!”
“But you don’t have any power,” Norma stated contemptuously. “You want to know how I’m so sure?”
The demon only spat at her feet.
“Because you fought with everything you had, and I still caught you. You were so desperate because you knew this wouldn’t end well for you after what you did to our friend.”
“Friend? He’s a spy!” the demon snarled. “I was trying to help! I was trying to get rid of the spy! I spied on the spy to annoy him, but the spy doesn’t get annoyed! And he wouldn’t leave! It’s his fault!”
“What are you talking about?” Blake asked, approaching the creature.
“What difference does it make?” Norma huffed. “Let’s just be done with this nonsense.”
“Stop,” Blake cut her off. Norma shot him an irritated glare. “What spy are you talking about?”
Abigail was just as curious. She felt something was wrong—a feeling the creature trembling with fear seemed to share—but she couldn’t understand it.
“He spies,” the demon announced. “He watches and watches. He only closes his eye sometimes. That’s why I succeeded. I had to get rid of him while I had the chance.”
“Who’s spying, and on whom? Is this about Will?”
“About the spy! I don’t know who. I don’t know for whom. But I know the spy is a spy!”
“Satisfied?” Norma muttered coldly. Blake grimaced and took a step back, apparently concluding that further questioning was pointless. “In that case, let’s get on with it.”
“Don’t touch me, you bitch!” the demon screeched. “You don’t have enough power to cast me out! You think I don’t know?”
“Maybe,” Norma replied ruthlessly. “But I’m not the one who’s going to be doing it. My friend is. Abby?”
Abigail slowly approached the creature.
“No… I don’t want to go,” the demon said, cowering in the corner. “I have nowhere to go. I don’t have enough strength. I don’t want to go!”
Abigail crouched down beside it.
“Give me time!” the creature screamed. “I’ll go on my own! I’ll go, just not yet! I need to gather my energy!”
“We’re done negotiating,” Norma stated firmly.
“No, please! I just wanted to help! I did the right thing! The right thing! You have to understand!”
Abigail touched the pale cheek.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.
She felt the souls pulsating inside the frail body. Two of them. Both terrified, though in different ways. Both woven from different matter. Neither one was unequivocally good or evil, but one was constantly racing toward chaos, like a moth drawn to a candle flame.
Today, Abigail was to be that flame.
She focused all her energy on driving out the source of chaos.
“NO!” the demon screamed furiously.
The pain it felt forced it to leave Christine’s body, but it still fought.
With the last of its strength, it tried to possess Abigail.
She felt the dark energy desperately digging into her, but she cast it out without much trouble.
Only a particle remained. One always did.
That was why it was better to leave demons to their own devices or persuade them to leave voluntarily, but that wasn’t always possible in this world.
“Are you okay?” Blake asked with concern, placing a hand on her shoulder.
She answered him with a quiet hum and slowly straightened up. She looked at the unconscious Christine. She knew it would be a long time before she woke up.
“Okay, since we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to the second issue,” Norma said.
Abigail looked at her questioningly.
“We found the demon in its hideout,” Liam explained. “Right at the edge of the forest. The problem is, I smelled something decomposing, so we did some digging and uncovered two bodies.”
“Whose?” Blake asked uneasily.
“A man and a woman. Christine’s parents, I assume,” Norma stated. “That explains why they weren’t particularly involved with their daughter.”
“For God’s sake…” Blake groaned.
“Can your father handle this somehow, or will we have to involve the Agency?”
“We’ll see.”
For a moment, there was complete silence in the room.
“Don’t tell Morgan,” Blake said suddenly.
“About us banishing the demon?” Norma snorted scornfully.
“About Christine’s parents.”
“Why?”
“He’s just been through a lot, he doesn’t need to hear stories like that.”
“It’s not his fault. These things happen. It’s part of our world. He has to get used to it.”
“You tried to get him used to it once before, and how did that end?” Blake hissed, losing his composure.
Norma shot him an indignant glare.
“He wanted it himself!”
“To have a demon on his back?”
“If you’re so smart, you should have caught it!”
Blake laughed unpleasantly.
“Same old story,” he commented venomously.
“What’s the same old story?”
“This is so you. Start some shit, and then shift the blame onto others.”
“What?”
“Give it a rest, you two,” Liam said. “We don’t—”
“Stay out of it!” Norma snarled at him before turning back to Blake. “Maybe you should just say what you mean?”
“I said what I meant!” Blake yelled. “He wasn’t ready! Maybe he never will be. But you took him in like some stray, you insisted on bringing him into our group, and these are the consequences!”
“And what was I supposed to do? Hold his hand, pat him on the head, and tell him the world of magic is all sunshine and roses?”
“We don’t even know if he’s a wizard.”
“Then what is he?”
“I don’t know! I’m just saying we don’t know, so you shouldn’t have taken a risk like that!”
“I was trying to help him!”
“You did a great job.”
“You did even better. You’re the one who let that demon push him in front of a car! You just stood there and watched!”
“I had no idea it was going to do something like that! There were people everywhere! I panicked, I didn’t know how to react!”
“Well, neither did I, so you can fuck off!”
Abigail listened to the exchange with growing agitation. It made no sense. They both felt guilty, they were both sad, and they both wanted to feel they had done the right thing, but instead of reaching an understanding and coming up with a plan, they were blaming each other.
“You’re the one who dragged him into this!” Blake shouted. “Don’t shift the blame to others!”
“Because I wanted him to feel like part of the group!” Norma yelled. “So he’d have something to do! I’m sorry I tried to be his friend!”
“I’d rather die than have a friend like you,” Blake hissed venomously.
Norma looked at him in disbelief, then screamed, “Then go and fucking die, Alden!”
“Stop,” Abigail whispered. She couldn’t stand it.
“You’re the worst person I know!”
“The feeling’s mutual! You accuse me of being irresponsible, but when it comes down to it, you’re just as happy to wash your hands of it! You’re just as guilty as I am! You dismissed him too!”
“Stop,” Abigail said, struggling to catch her breath.
“I didn’t have as much information as you did! When I asked what was going on, you said he was overreacting!”
“Because I thought he was! How was I supposed to know something like this would happen?”
“You could have thought about it! But you don’t like doing that. You’d rather play the vapid party girl to piss off your daddy!”
Norma slapped Blake across the face.
“You’ll regret that!”
Liam stepped between them, trying to separate them. As a result, all three of them began to scuffle.
A blackness veiled Abigail’s eyes. Her body went rigid, and the sound that came from her echoed with a thousand voices:
“STOP!”
It rolled through the room like a storm, piercing them to the core and causing them to fall silent, scared and disoriented.
“Enough,” Abigail whispered, taking a deep breath to compose herself. “It’s been a long day. I want to go home.”
“Yeah. Let’s go, Abby,” Blake said, putting an arm around her shoulder and leading her out of the cabin.
“Sure, just leave it to us!” Norma called after them.
One thing was certain.
Ever since they discovered Will Morgan, everything had changed for the worse.